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The in-your-face cover practically orders a reader to pick up the book. Set in Mexico, and based on the 1994 Chiapas uprising, the story has a real immediacy to it. When we first meet Peter (our protagonist) in a grungy south of the border bar, we can almost smell the reek of piss and beer. Bailey is equally persuasive setting scenes like the ones where revolutionaries read about themselves in Newsweek and Vanity Fair. The love story that happens between Peter and Lxil (a strong female character with a nearly magical name) is believable and engaging.

Set amid the Zapatista revolution of the 1990s through the present day, Zapatista is a novel about a writer who gets caught up in the struggle for the poverty-stricken Native Americans of Mexico. In the middle of guns, bloodshed, and the hope for a more equal tomorrow, he falls in love with a beautiful Native woman and his life changes forever. Zapatista documents Blake Bailey as a gifted writer of memorable fiction who is able to make his characters live and their surroundings form an impressive context for original storytelling. A portion of the proceeds from Zapatista will be donated to the Zapatista movement in Mexico.

Zapatista is historical fiction loosely based on incidents surrounding the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. It tells the story of Peter, who travels to a small village in Chiapas in order to escape the hustle and bustle of the corporate world. His utopian dreams of writing novels in the jungle take a turn for the worse and he is soon forced to trade in his typewriter for a gun in order to support the Zapatistas. Blake Bailey provides a skillful and convincing depiction of the people involved in the Zapatista movement, the events of 1994, and even the Chiapas jungles. He puts you right smack in the middle of the action and you soon develop admiration and empathy for the strength and character of the Zapatistas. The only problem is the ending. The very imperialism that Bailey implicitly denounces rears its ugly head as the White protagonist, Peter, conquers the elusive heart (and body) of a local Indian girl.

A reviewer, an avid book reader, September 25, 2001
Very good book I read the book and found it very entrapping, (i finished it in one week), living in Texas there is a lot that goes on in mexico that i was not aware of, this book helped a lot, however the review listed below kind of missed the picture... (i don't want to spoil it for you) so i wont go into detail but the relationship between peter and the indian woman was anything but forcing U.S. culture on the indian woman.